The Highland District Hospital Gift Shop is ushering in the holidays with its 2018 open house Nov. 1-3 with complimentary cider and gourmet food samples, and 10 percent off of all purchases during the special early preview sale from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday Nov. 1.

“It’s something that we have normally for our open house on Friday and Saturday,” Pam Limes, one of the shops four co-managers, told the Times-Gazette. “But on Thursday, we’ll have a special ‘light up’ with merchandise that lights up so the place will have that festive Christmas look.”

Cathy Jones has been working with Limes for the past decade, but gives much of the credit for the gift shop’s success to the other managers, and especially the volunteers.

“Terri Balser, who is an ER nurse, and Kristy Greer, who was in radiology but has since retired, help us with the merchandise,” she said. “But it’s the volunteers who keep the whole thing rolling, and we couldn’t do it without them.”

Limes was quick to point out that all proceeds from gift shop sales are returned to the hospital, and that the gift shop is at the halfway mark of giving $50,000 to the emergency room renovation campaign.

“We’re in the middle of a five-year pledge for the ER project,” she said. “Plus, we’re always looking for ways to help our hospital’s various departments with items they want, but aren’t budgeted for.”

Jones said the gift shop has been a fixture at HDH since the hospital was built in 1962, and through the years “hundreds of thousands of dollars have been given back to the hospital through this gift shop.”

“When they built the new addition back in the late 1990s,” she said, “the gift shop funded purchase and installation of the new windows. This little gift shop has done a remarkable amount of buying equipment for patients and decorations over the years, and people should know that when they shop for items here.”

Loretta McNamee is one of the gift shops eight volunteers. The 93-year old Chicago native is part cashier and part counselor, and moved to Hillsboro in 1953.

“I do this because I want to help people,” she said. “They come in here and tell me their troubles, and we may also push folks around in their wheelchairs or run blood samples to the lab, whatever we need to do to help with patient care.”

In addition to the early preview sale Nov. 1, the Highland District Hospital Gift Shop open house will be Friday Nov. 2 from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and Saturday, Nov. 3 from 8 a.m. to noon.